Botswana Stock Exchange listed renewable energy development company Shumba Energy has joined hands with top solar company-Solarcentury Africa to develop its renewable energy projects.
The Board of Shumba Energy Limited on Thursday announced through a circular to its shareholders that Shumba and Solarcentury Africa have signed a co-development agreement to utilise their combined capabilities and strengths to deliver renewable energy and storage projects together in Southern Africa.
This follows the Company’s recent announcement that further to an extensive review of the Company’s operations, the Company’s primary focus in the immediate term going forward will be on delivery of renewable energy projects.
Shumba Chairman and Co-founder Mr Alan Clegg described the move as a culmination of focussed execution of the Board’s defined strategy to seek and engage the best development partners to deliver utility scale renewable energy source projects in the generation sector of Botswana and Southern Africa.
“We are both delighted and proud that we could attract a partner of the caliber and experience of Solarcentury Africa that has a real track record of delivery of sustainable projects that can enable the Shumba vision of maximizing our contribution to achieving carbon neutrality within our greater business and on our continent” he said.
Mr. Clegg explained that the contribution of Solarcentury Africa is expected to be material within the two parties ‘s co-development roles, with some of the key benefits they bring being in terms of providing technical support for Shumba’s role in obtaining any necessary permits, consents or licences; providing financial modelling and Project valuation, engineering design and plant optimisation; EPC procurement and liaison; and providing EPCM services.
” We are looking forward to developing with the Solarcentury Africa team a strong, mutually beneficial and proud track record of delivery, beginning with our Tati 100MWp Solar Project in Botswana.” he added Solarcentury Africa is a market leader in the development of solar PV and storage projects with a decade of experience across multiple African countries.
The London based company is a vertically integrated developer using cutting edge design, smart technologies and robust controls to generate clean and economical power for businesses, communities and investors.
Solarcentury Africa is part of the BB Energy Group, one of the largest independent energy trading companies with a fast-growing renewable energy division.
Commenting on the move Jason De Carteret, Solarcentury Africa Head of Development said his company was looking forward to work with Shumba.
“We are thrilled to be working with Shumba Energy, not only to deliver the Tati project, but also to realise the substantial growth opportunity for solar in Botswana and other countries across Southern Africa.
”The Company has been developing renewable energy opportunities for several years to incorporate into the longer-term growth plans of the business, and as standalone projects, being reflected now with the rapid advancement of the Tati Solar Project.
The world class 100 MW solar project in Tati near the city of Francistown is currently in the late stage of developing Phase 1, a 50 MW Solar farm on a project site of 300 hectares.The Project is part of a two-phase program to develop the full 100 MW solar capacity of the site as a key strategic initiative in the region.
The Project was recently issued and Environmental Authorisation and awarded a Generation and Construction License.
Last week Shumba said it will now refocus its strategy to Botswana in a move to expedite the company’s commercial glory.
In a statement last Thursday the company which has been domicile in Mauritius with its corporate offices based in the Indian ocean country, announced that it will be moving to Botswana and intends to list on the country Botswana Stock Exchange Democratic main board.
Shumba was established over 10 years ago and its asset base has grown substantially and has advanced its projects closer to being ready for production.Alan M. Clegg, Co-Founder and Chairman of Shumba Energy announced in the statement that although the company has raised a reasonable amount of capital on the Foreign Venture Board, the move to the Domestic Main Board will allow the company to raise the capital required to get assets in production and also attract a larger number of investors.
Clegg says reorganization will also allow Shumba Energy (Botswana), that owns the operational and resource assets of the Group, to achieve significant savings in overhead costs and administrative efficiencies through reduced overhead costs in maintaining the Mauritius domiciled corporate entities and the compliance and reporting requirements associated with this legacy corporate structure that is no longer providing value to Shareholders.
These savings according to the statement are estimated to be USD500 000(over P5 million) per annum which are considerable and important particularly in this period with the impact of COVID-19 on the business.
The collaboration with Solarcentury Africa is seen as a watershed move that will catapult Shumba ‘ projects into commercial operations that will deliver serious shareholder value.
